Boys don't cry : the struggle for justice and healing in Canada's biggest sex abuse scandal

Summary: David McCann was sent to St. Joseph's Training School for Boys in Alfred, ON in 1958. He was twelve years old. Over the course of the next four years, he was repeatedly beaten, sexually molested, and raped by the Christian Brothers who ran the school. Both he and his mother complained but no action was taken. In those day, the word of a delinquent kid carried little weight when opposed by that of a teacher and man of God. McCann put the memories behind him and attempted to get on with his life. More than thirty years later McCann watched, fascinted, when the Mount Cashel scandal broke in Newfoundland. He realized that other men had come froward with similar stories to tell and had been heard. He got in touch with Darcy Henton. The article henton subsequently wrote in he Toronto Star was like the breaching of a dam: testimony from hundreds of other victims soon flooded the media. Now, half a dozen years later, more than a thousand former wards of the Christian Brothers have come forward to tell their stories. More than thirty Brothers and former Brothers have been charged with more than two hundred crimes, ranging from assault causing bodily harm to indecent assault and buggery. For nearly half a century, the Brothers who ran St. John's and St Joseph's training schools presided over an unparalleled reign of perversion and terror. The story of how David McCann led the surviving ward on a crusade for recognition and justice is stirring and heartbreaking, triumph of determination in the face of callous indifference.